July 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:41
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| So are there benefits to a man? | |
| Are there any benefits to a man to get married in terms of just practical outcomes? | |
| All the data and studies that I cited, are there any benefits that you would accept to a man for getting married? | |
| Okay, so the benefits. | |
| This is yes, no. | |
| No, this is yes, no. | |
| Are there any benefits that you would accept from the data that I cited that it's beneficial to a man to get married? | |
| Any data? | |
| And to say yes, no, anything. | |
| There is some benefit, yes, but it's still worth the risk. | |
| Fantastic. | |
| So you said to me, there's no benefit for getting... | |
| I never said there is no benefit. | |
| I'm still talking, still talking. | |
| So you said there's no benefit to a man to get married, and now you're accepting there are benefits to a man to get married. | |
| That's fantastic. | |
| I always said the risk is not worth it. | |
| Okay. | |
| Well, that's just another moving of the goalposts. | |
| So I appreciate the conversation, but you are fixed in your thinking. | |
| And I would also say that this is to a large degree because you live an isolated life that is not really fit for people as a whole. | |
| And I think it's actually. | |
| Yeah, see, but this is part of it. | |
| So it doesn't matter what data I provide, right? | |
| It doesn't matter what data I provide. | |
| It does. | |
| He just wants to do his own thing. | |
| And listen, if you are so constituted for whatever reason, right? | |
| If you're so constituted, I'm not trying to change his mind. | |
| I'm just trying to deal with facts. | |
| If you're so constituted that for you to have happiness that involves other people's happiness, because that's what love is, really. | |
| Love is when the happiness of those around you is central to your own happiness and your happiness is central to their happiness. | |
| So if you're so constituted or you're surrounded by such trashy and exploitive people that it's a zero-sum game or a negative sum game, that you can only become happy by making other people unhappy or you don't care about their happiness. | |
| In other words, if you're a bully, I'm not saying this guy's a bully, but I'm just giving you a theoretical. | |
| So if you're so constituted that other people's happiness is not part of your happiness, then sure, it all feels like sacrificing your own happiness in order to make other people happy. | |
| You end up unhappy and they end up happy. | |
| Of course, the win-win situation, which is a loving, mature, adult, productive relationship, the win-win situation is that my wife's happiness, my daughter's happiness, my friend's happiness, my family's happiness as a whole, the world's happiness as a whole, my happiness is very, very tightly bound into all of those things. | |
| I can't be happy if my family is unhappy, right? | |
| I mean, obviously we all make sacrifices. | |
| You know, it's not like I'm overjoyed to go to the dentist, but that's so I can be happier later. | |
| I love spending time with my daughter. | |
| And was there sacrifices? | |
| Yeah, I spent 10 years without writing any books because I was heavily involved in parenting. | |
| Do I consider that a sacrifice? | |
| No, it's not a sacrifice. | |
| I'm happier having spent those 10 years with my daughter or much closer to my daughter than writing books. | |
| I don't consider that a loss at all. | |
| Now, if I only focus on the minuses and none of the pluses, which is solipsistic and frankly kind of narcissistic, which is that my happiness, absent anyone else's happiness, is the only thing I'm going to guide my life by, well, then you're going to be alone. | |
| Nobody's going to want to spend any time with you. | |
| I mean, I found it fairly unbearable to even be in a conversation because all he wanted to do was win, which is hedonism, as opposed to actually learn something or have a conversation with someone who has a different perspective. | |
| So I'm not trying to convince him that he should get married. | |
| If he doesn't want to get married, he doesn't want to get married. | |
| That's fine. | |
| But that simply means that he is in a situation in life where other people's happiness is not part of his happiness. | |
| And the only thing he cares about or is concerned about is his own happiness. | |
| And bringing happiness to others is not a value for him. | |
| Unless it somehow serves himself selfishly in the moment. | |
| So once you merge your life with other people, like you have two trees that grow together, you can't just cut down one, right? | |
| Once two trees grow together, then what harms one side of the tree harms the other side of the tree, right? | |
| Like, I mean, if you smoke, it doesn't just harm your lungs, right? | |
| It harms your lungs and then your life if your lungs don't work because you can't live without breathing. | |
| So there are benefits to men for getting married. | |
| I mean, I went through a whole list of five or ten of them with some objective data in there. | |
| And so there are benefits. | |
| And then if he says, ah, yes, but the benefits aren't worth the risks. | |
| Well, then he wasn't listening to the first part. | |
| So if you can get all of these benefits and you can reduce your risk to less than 5%, that's a plus, right? | |
| So people go jogging. | |
| And I actually had a friend when I was younger. | |
| He was about to get married. | |
| He went jogging and he was hit by a car. | |
| Some kids wired a car and went for a joyride and smacked into him in a country road in the middle of the night and killed him. | |
| Now, one of the things that he wanted to do was get a little fitter and lose a little bit of weight in order to be more attractive to his fiancé and bride to be and so on. | |
| So people go out and they go jogging and jogging has health benefits. | |
| And the risk is, of course, injury, getting hit by a bus, tripping and falling, all of these kinds of things. | |
| And yet people do it. | |
| If you go and lift weights, I've been lifting weights for the better part of 40 plus years. | |
| And every now and then, every couple of years, I'll hurt myself in some manner. | |
| You know, when you play with your kids, every now and then, you're just going to, you know, you play with little kids, every now and then, you're going to take an accidental headbutt to the nets. | |
| So what are you supposed to do? | |
| Never play with your kids? | |
| So yeah, all of life has costs and benefits. | |
| And the benefits are enormous and substantial for men to get married. | |
| Of course, I understand that if you get divorced and you get abuse allegations and you lose half your stuff and it's horrible. | |
| And yeah, that's really, really tough. | |
| I mean, I'm not saying those risks don't exist. | |
| And you can go through the process of looking at all these benefits and then looking at all these risks, say, well, even if I can get the risk down to below 5% for all of these benefits, I'm not going to do it. | |
| Okay, well, that's fine. | |
| But just be aware that there is a cost-benefit justification that is important to talk about. | |
| Now, if all of these benefits were available, even if you accepted them all, but the risk of divorce was 50%, no matter what, that you couldn't get your risk of divorce lower than 50%, I'd say, well, yeah, it would make any sense to get married. | |
| But there are very specific, and not just my opinion, things that are tested to reduce the risk of divorce. |
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